The most common request, whilst designing bathrooms in the London area, is to remove the bath and install a good shower design instead. “What?!” I hear thousands of estate agents scream! Apparently, the clamour for baths on property hunts is more important than a South facing garden (or is West the new South, I get confused?!). Estate agent babble to one side, removing baths from the property may be a bad idea, as every now and then you can’t beat a good soak. If you’ve got the room, do both (as in this image courtesy of S&E Glass Design).

With the average house in London costing more than £370,000, the size of bathrooms is likely to be compromised for the average person and makes affording the £30,000 bathroom above unlikely. Installing a new bathroom can deliver up to 5% increase in asking prices, allegedly. But will the absence of a bath in the main bathroom be an issue, if space or budget are a problem? On balance, is less in fact more when it comes to showers?

Less space: They can take up less footprint than a bath and help the room to feel more open and spacious, even when the dimensions are a bit tight as below.

Less water: According to the European Environmental Agency taking a shower can cut your water consumption by up to a third.: pause as you lather & get a flow reducing shower head, though. Mind you, with the pitiful water pressure we have in the UK, I shouldn’t worry too much about a flow reducer…

Less time: Obviously it is much quicker to grab a shower than to run a bath.

Less inhibitions: Removing walls and having the shower enclosure act as a wall itself will save about 10cm in space, but won’t save any blushes. Ahem.

Image from Morph project in Islington

At the end of the day, the perception of a walk-in shower room gives so much more of an impact than a standard bath layout. I think our friend Rupert the Estate Agent would use the phrase the ‘Wow Factor’ (see this blog on ‘How to choose you Estate Agent’ for explanation of the ‘Rupert’ appellation, by dear friend to Morph and award winning blogger Tracy Kellet). Certainly walk-in showers are very de rigeur, but what happens if you are confronted with a space like this?

Image from Morph project in Kensington

Well, after you’ve called in the damp surveyor and sorted out the obvious, the other immediate problem looking at this image is that there is not enough room to swing a cat. Even a 70 x 70cm shower cubicle (otherwise known as the ‘elbow basher’) won’t sit easily next to a WC on this wall. Any shower design starts with a ‘design anchor’; the beastie sitting in the corner that can’t be moved (without additional costs). In this case, it’s the soil stack on the left. Not only is it defining where the WC will go, but it’s also going to define the waste level for the shower and the size of enclosure. Our answer was to give the client a huge shower, with integrated shelving:

Image from Morph project in Kensington

We raised the floor of the shower and created a wet room, with the added benefit that if the damp issue hadn’t been resolved, the membrane would keep damp out as well as the water in. The cistern for the WC was actually installed in the roof space above and we straightened the waste run to the soil pipe so it could be rodded from the WC in case of blockage. Sometimes the very thing that is causing the issue, is the actually the answer you are looking for. “There are no problems, only solutions”… for ablutions (sorry John). The shower design for me is primarily about the intelligent use of space. In this bathroom below, the client had a pitifully small shower enclosure & separate bath. But why have a cramped shower when you have enough space for 60cm diameter shower head and room for two?

Image from Morph project in Bayswater

Any good interior designer will be acutely aware that our efforts are geared towards enhancing our clients’ feeling of ‘well-being’. Often, in our research to draw together plans we act as dieticians for kitchens and alternative therapists in bathrooms; and it is true that baths offer more benefits to the stressed human body than showers. Basically, you can’t get a whirlpool spa into a shower although some companies come close with the extreme functions on their shower heads: they can take the skin off, massage the neck and shoulders, flood the room with colour changing light therapy, make you fell like you’re under a cloud burst and pick the kids up from school. OK, not the last one, but you get the picture. In the bathroom above, the Raindance Rainmaker from Hansgrohe is the last choice before jumping into serious money for shower heads. Well, I’ve started now so I might as well show you this:

No, there is not a hole in the ceiling and the picture wasn’t taken during a rain storm. That beauty in the background is RainSky M from Dornbracht and is quite possibly the one of the most expensive shower heads on the market. Possibly.

I could go on ad infinitum about different shower heads, but the focus here is on the use of space and how shower design impacts on the overall aesthetic of the bathroom scheme. Hopefully you have had a taster of how much impact a shower can have if designed into the space correctly. We not only write about good design, we tend to practice it as well. Should you need any further advice or are looking for a great bathroom, we are here to help. Meanwhile, in the event that you feel you can’t achieve a walk-in shower if it means sacrificing a bath; don’t! We have the answer to that as well…

With Milan fair over for another year, I thought I would post a little photo diary of my three day trip.

Week before the Fair

I did my usual checks to make sure that my hotel and flights were all booked and OK, and realised that I had booked both for a day too early, after a £60 change of flight charge I was back on track to fly out on Wednesday the 18th April.

With a 4.30am alarm call, the drive to Gatwick at that ungodly hour was uneventful and the airport was unusually efficient with very little queuing. I was lucky to the get one of the 3 front row seats with the extra leg room (I’m 6″5`), and for those who know me well, it will come as no surprise that I was asleep before some people had even boarded!!!

As we taxied on the runway, I was rudely awakened by a commotion at the back of the plane, someone had stood up or something, took very little notice and went happily back to sleep.

After a nice nap that lasted almost all the way to Milan, I awoke slightly better rested. On the bus from the plane to the terminal the Captain joined us, and he was duly interrogated about the person that had caused the commotion, and why he had to be restrained and handcuffed to the seat, with police waiting for him on the runway. He gave very little away, except that this was the 6th time they had trying to deport him back to Italy, and the disturbance was his way of trying to be removed from the flight again.

Day 1

The Fair

For those who have never been or heard of Fuori Saloni (Milan Furniture Fair), it’s in the new Milan Fair Rho Pero and it`s one of the largest shows world-wide with 8 large pavilions for indoor exhibitions and 60,000m for outdoor exhibitions space. The Milan Fair is one of the most important in the international trade fair sectors, full of the best (and some of the worst) design products you will find anywhere. Here are my picks of the good, the bad and the downright ugly…

With the fair done, it`s now the time for the satellite shows dotted around Milan city. With 367 organised exhibitions from front rooms, to large warehouses not to mention all the other unofficial Street sides shows. The hippest area traditionally being Tortona.

Following another day walking for 12 hours: here’s the best of what I found.

Valcucine & DeMode

Full circle designed kitchen, made with mostly recycled materials. Once it has finished it’s life as a kitchen, Valcucine will collect it and recycle it, free of charge

Austrian Design

Agape

L’Invisibile

The best thing at Milan, an almost invisible electrical door… it’s amazing when you see detail working so well…

Molteni & C

Resident

Blackbody

Day 3

Woke up to painful calf muscles, following 2 solid days of pounding the fair and streets of Milan. Another good breakfast and back to Tortona to see the rest of what I missed the night before. It’s unfortunate that the area has lost its edge. The big companies have moved in and are trying to piggy back on the coolness of the previous years. But this is the best of what I found there.

Chimere

spoil your pets

Saazs

Glass which are a heaters or that change from clear to sandblasted. Neat.

With a new area having started in the north of Milan, I worked my way up to Via Ventura; this new frontier was full of the best that Milan can offer, and the coolest young designers around.

We have an 8 page spread in Essential Kitchen, Bedroom, Bathroom magazine (May 2012) for a project we completed in North London. I have attached a few of the images of you to have a look at, hope you like them.

This vehicle was built by François Knorreck. Although his real job is technician in an hospital at Saint-Etienne in France, he spends all his free time to build, manufacture, modify and tune motorbikes. He spent 10000 hours of hard work, more than 10 years from time to time in the garage and about 15000 Euros to create this vehicle. Wonderful “hobby”!